Beaneball

With a sweep of Seattle and Texas's two losses (out of three) to Anaheim, the A's have moved to just half a game back of the division leaders with a big series in Texas coming up. The A's could finish up as much as 3.5 games ahead or 4.5 games behind in the best and worst case scenarios. That worst case scenario would put the A's in the position of having to erase the magical four game lead after the trading deadline, while the best-case scenario is only marginally better for the Rangers. The fact that the games will be played in Texas doesn't really bode well for Oakland, who've been awful as of late on the road. Also on the pessimism tip is that Mark Mulder won't pitch against the Rangers, having won his 14th game last night over Seattle. Kirk Saarloos goes against RA Dickey tonight, and while Saarloos's last outing wasn't terribly special, the A's still won the game. On the other hand, after two sparkling starts (11.2 innings, 1 RA), he's regressed some in his last two (8.2 innings, 6 RA). It's hard to say what the A's will be getting. RA Dickey, on the other hand, should be pretty predictable: a 5.78 ERA and four runs in 5.1 innings in his last start (in Oakland) make the hope for a 5-7 run game for the A's a reasonable one. Rich Harden goes Friday, supposedly against John Wasdin, but I'm pretty sure Wasdin was designated for assignment after his last start, so I don't know who we'll see there. Whoever it is, it won't be Kenny Rogers (because he also pitched last night, and lost), so it's pretty safe to say they won't be very good. This is, first place and all, still the Rangers. Harden's been pretty good in July, having just a 5-inning, 7-run blowup against Boston diminishing his record. On the other hand, he threw 125 pitches over 8.2 innings against Toronto two starts ago, and took 119 just to get through five innings against Texas last time. Combine those starts with Harden's record as the most heavily used A's starter (by Baseball Prospectus's Pitcher Abuse Points), his age, his general inconsistency, a usually high-powered Texas offense, and the incredible hitting environment that the Ballpark at Arlington is and what you sum up to is worry. Zito and Redman throw the last two games of the series, and it almost doesn't matter who they're pitching against. You have no idea what you're going to get out of them, and an A's win is almost entirely dependent on whether Good Lefty or Bad Lefty shows up. Pray for Good Lefty so that the season doesn't come down to the A's playing three games against the Angels while the Rangers get three against Seattle. Ah, and what about Seattle? Oakland won a couple of close games on Tuesday and Wednesday, 5-3 and 3-2 and overcame Bad Zito on Monday (a four-run second inning) by scoring 14 runs, including at least one tagged to each pitcher who showed up for the Mariners. The bullpen held up against a late Seattle charge on Tuesday as Jim Mecir and Octavio Dotel struck out four of the five batters they faced (Dotel hit Miguel Olivo) to end the game. Yesterday saw Mark Mulder hanging and hanging and hanging, waiting for the A's to piece together enough runs to overcome a pair of singletons scored in the second and third by Seattle. An Eric Byrnes home run tied the game in the eighth to bail Mulder out and a Mark Kotsay pinch-hit single won the game in the ninth. Despite barely-adequate Jermaine Dye having shown up this year, Eric Byrnes and Mark Kotsay have lifted the outfield to heights a lot of A's fans couldn't imagine after last year's debacle. Let's go back to that 14-run first game, though. The A's pounded out thirteen hits, but with just two doubles and an Erubiel Durazo solo (i.e. patented) homer, how on earth did they turn that in fourteen runs? Why, by walking fourteen times, of course, including drawing nine from starter Travis Blackley in just four innings. The A's themselves walked five, which is more than you might normally see out of them also (despite it being a Barry Zito start), so you might start wondering about the umpires in this game, especially since Seattle's pitching coach, Bryan Price, got thrown out of the game for getting all fired up and running out to yell at the home plate umpire, Charlie Reliford, about balls and strikes. Luckily for us, Baseball Prospectus tracks umpires. How does Reliford usually call games? Reliford's called 331 innings in 19 games behind the plate this year, so we're dealing with a decent sample. Surprisingly, he looks like one of the better pitcher's umpires around. His games have resulted in a 4.1 RA with a composite batter's line of just .251/.331/.379. Compared to league averages, those batting averages and slugging percentages are very low. The thing is, his strike-ball ratio is right in line with the middle of the pack, as nearly as I can eyeball it (the umpire stats are alphabetical, so it's hard to tell), while his BB/9 ratio is notably toward the upper end (he's one of just six umpires with a ratio over four). Conclusion? Reliford's umpiring falls right in line with those of his colleagues, but he's managed to be behind the plate for some of the more powerless teams in the leauge this year, purely by chance. In fact, there are just two umpires with lower HR/9 rates (as rounded to one decimal place, anyway) this year, though there are about ten who are tied with him at 0.8.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 12:03 | |

With two comfortable victories over Texas, the A's moved back to just 2.5 games behind the Rangers as the AL West matchups continue. Oakland plays at home against Seattle tonight, and the A's have been nearly unstoppable in the Coliseum, where they're 33-15, second only to the Yankees in all of baseball. The Achilles heel of the team has been road trips: they're just 20-29 away from home, a road record too similar to that of teams like Colorado, Cincinnati, the Mets, Cleveland, and Tampa Bay to be of any comfort to A's fans. The A's won the last two games of the series exactly the way they're supposed to against the Rangers: the A's strength (pitching and defense) held Texas to four runs total, while the Rangers weakness (pitching and defense) allowed the A's to score fifteen. On Saturday, Kirk Saarloos had another "who needs brilliance, just keep us in the game" start, pitching five innings and, despite giving up just three hits, allowing two runs. Saarloos walked five batters, but none of them ended up hurting him. The two runs scored on a Mark Teixeira homer and an Alfonso Soriano sac-fly, driving in David Dellucci, who had doubled, then moved to third on a groundout. Following Saarloos was another good long outing by Justin Duchscherer, who went 2 2/3 innings, allowing three baserunners, no runs, and striking out three. Jim Mecir and Octavio Dotel finished things from there, with Dotel striking out all three men he faced. Mark Kotsay is heating up, and Eric Chavez appears to be getting his power stroke back. Chavez hit his fifteenth homer in this game, and would hit his sixteenth on Sunday. Kotsay bashed two bombs, and added another on Sunday, padding his season total to eight, and helping his July batting line rise to .388/.454/.635. He's not walking as much as I thought he would, with just a .060 ISO-OBP, but I think I've been deluding myself in thinking that he was going to be a walks monster. His best ISO-OBP of his career was last year's .077 mark. The important question, then, is "Will Kotsay finish the year with his current .324 batting average? And what about his career-best .461 slugging percentage?" Kotsay's clearly playing over his head, as his July line shows, and I think he'll come back to earth. His batting average is better than his previous career best by .026. And his slugging percentage is entirely batting-average driven: his .137 ISO-SLG is essentially the same as his career mark, .136. He's playing in a park that's not very nice to left-handed hitters, so you have to respect his work so far, but that doesn't mean you have to expect it to continue. My prediction? He'll hit over .300 for this first time in his career, and his ISO's will stay the same, resulting in a .301/.361/.438 line. (Note the .799 OPS: I'm cruel. Couldn't I have just given him an .800? No!) There are about eleven center fielders hitting better than that right now. One of those is Jeromy Burnitz, who's (a) Coors-aided and (2) probably not the defensive center-fielder that Kotsay is. Actually, a cringe-worthy note for A's fans. The player whose line looks the most similar to this projection right now? Randy Winn. Anyway, Sunday's game was much the same. A young A's starting pitcher last just five innings, giving up two runs on a low number of hits (two), while walking five and giving up a homer. The bullpen was even better this time around, allowing just one baserunner (a Justin Lehr walk) over the final four innings, including six straight ground balls induced by Chad Bradford. Meanwhile, Eric Byrnes and Erubiel Durazo added homers to the Chavez and Kotsay jobs I already mentioned. All four A's homers came off of former Athletic John Wasdin. The last time Wasdin was with the A's was 1996, when he was 23 years old. Were any of the current A's members of that team? Why don't I just say, not even close. This was not the kind of young team that would still have players with the team eight years later. The list of guys on that team who've appeared in the bigs this year is small: Jason Giambi, Tony Batista, Matt Stairs, Scott Spiezio, John Wasdin, Buddy Groom, Todd Van Poppel, and Jay Witasick. That's eight out of 43 who appeared at least once for the team. I wonder if that's normal? Well, let's pick five teams and see how many of their players played in the majors eight years later (and, as a side note, how many played for the same team). I could do this historically, but I think I'd rather see if this is normal hold-over for this particular era. The random number generator spits out 3, 9, 23, 7, and 12. Those correspond to Florida, the Cubs, Minnesota, Houston, and Los Angeles. The number to beat is 18.6% of year's roster still playing. Additionally, I'll add this: the position players accounted for 16.7% of the team's at-bats, and the pitchers accounted for (about - I'm just going to round off fractions of innings) 19.5% of the team's innings pitched. In Florida, we've got Charles Johnson, Greg Colbrunn, Edgar Renteria, Jeff Conine (same team!), Gary Sheffield, Luis Castillo (same team!), Billy McMillon, Gregg Zaun, Al Leiter, Kevin Brown, Jay Powell, Chris Hammond, Dave Weathers, Matt Mantei, Felix Heredia, Miguel Batista, and Livan Hernandez. That's 17 out of 46, or 37%, and 2/46 = 4.3% of the team's roster stayed the same (compared to 0% of the A's). The players accounted for 52.3% of the team's at-bats and 49.9% of the team's innings. Also, it should be noted that Robb Nen, who's still officially active despite not having pitched, was on that team, and Rick Helling, who finished up with the Marlins last year, is trying to make it up from the minors in Texas. I'm sticking with my rules, though. On to the Cubs! Rey Sanchez, Luis Gonzalez, Sammy Sosa (same team!), Jose Hernandez, Doug Glanville, Brooks Kieschnick, Frank Castillo, Steve Trachsel, Amaury Telemaco, Terry Adams, Rodney Myers, and Tanyon Sturtze. That's 12/41 = 29.2% of the team, and 2.4% still with the team. They accounted for 33.9% of the at-bats and 45.5% of the innings. The Twins! Greg Myers, Matt Lawton, Denny Hocking, Todd Walker, Brad Radke (same team!), Eddie Guardado, Jose Parra, and LaTroy Hawkins. That's 8/38 = 21.1%, with 2.6% still with the team. They accounted for 13.9% of the at-bats and 27.9% of the innings. The Astros! Jeff Bagwell (same team!), Craig Biggio (same team!), Ricky Gutierrez, Bobby Abreu, Shane Reynolds, Mike Hampton, Todd Jones, and Billy Wagner. That's 8/43 = 18.6%, with 4.7% still on the team. They accounted for 27.9% of the at-bats and 35.1% of the innings. It should be noted that it seems likely that Darryl Kile, who was a member of that team, would still be in the big leagues were he still alive. Kile threw 219 innings for that team and batted 73 times. The Dodgers! Mike Piazza, Eric Karros, Todd Hollandsworth, Roger Cedeno, Raul Mondesi, Juan Castro, Dave Hansen, Wilton Guerrero, Karim Garcia, Hideo Nomo (same team!), Ismael Valdes/Valdez, Antonio Osuna, Chan Ho Park, and Darren Dreifort. That's 14/40 = 35%, with 2.5% still on the team. They accounted for 52.1% of the at-bats and 45.7% of the innings. Additionally, Joey Eischen is still hanging around on the Expos DL. Let's put that in a table!

Team	%Playing	%Same Team	%AB's	%IP
Oakland	18.6	0	16.7	19.5
Florida	37	4.3	52.3	49.9
Chicago	29.2	2.4	33.9	45.5
Minn	21.1	2.6	13.9	27.9
Houston	18.6	4.7	27.9	35.1
LA	35	2.5	52.1	45.7

I'm guessing that this represents a pretty good cross-section of your average team. The A's and Houston would probably be on the low end of the first column if we did this for every team, and the Dodgers and Marlins would probably be on the high end. There are extremes, certainly, that we're probably missing. For example, how many current Yankees do you think will still be around in 2012? Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter are the only two players who come to mind. The "same team" column isn't totally forthcoming, because Hideo Nomo left LA and came back, and the same for Jeff Conine in Florida. When we're talking about only a pool of seven players, those two change things quite a bit. The percentage of at-bats is interesting. LA and Florida had lots of good young players who they let play. This was still a time of a ripe farm system for the Dodgers, and they let the fruits of their labors help them to within one game of a division championship, while the Marlins were playing the core of their 1997 championship team. Note that four of the six teams have %AB higher than %Playing. The two exceptions are Oakland and Minnesota, and the A's are at least in the ballpark. What's wrong with Minnesota, then? Perhaps it's the age-old Minnesota problem of having good young hitting talent and not letting it play.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 20:28 | |

The bad Barry Zito is back. Good Zito had been the one who was showing up recently, but after allowing five runs in five innings to a lineup that included Raul Ibanez, Jolbert Cabrera, Justin Leone, and Willie Bloomquist, I think it's safe to say that we saw Bad Zito again last night. After all, when Ricardo Rincon can come in and throw a scoreless complete inning against a lineup, it's probably not the next murderer's row we're talking about. It's too bad that Bucky Jacobsen's home-run in the tenth won the game for Seattle, because the A's had a decent little offensive night, with ten hits, four of which went for homers, and a nifty comeback capped by Scott Hatteberg's game-tying, pinch-hit, two-run homer in the top of the eighth. I'm starting to worry that Texas is getting out of reach. They're three and a half up now, and have four fewer losses than Oakland. With Boston's loss last night, the A's remained tied for the wild card spot, but you don't want to go toe-to-toe with a team with that much talent down the stretch, especially when that team will be playing Baltimore, Tampa Bay, and Toronto, instead of Anaheim and Texas (though the A's do get Seattle and the Red Sox get the Yanks). Where have the A's been after 93 games the last few years? Last year, they were four games behind Seattle and a game out of the wild card, but ended up winning the division. In 2002, they were also four games behind Seattle, but a game and a half up for the wild card, and again they ended up taking the division. In 2001, the Mariners ran away and the A's had only just begun to play. Oakland was a whopping eighteen games behind Seattle, and five games out of the wild card hunt, behind both Boston and Cleveland. The A's more than made up those five games in their ensuing tear, though, taking the wild card at the end. In 2000, the A's were (again) behind Seattle, this time by three games, but they led the wild card by a game and a half, tied in the wins column with Toronto, but with three fewer losses. Oakland won the division. The last time the A's weren't in the playoffs was 1999. Here's a bad omen, though: Oakland trailed Texas by five games at this point, though they were also three and a half back of the wild card. If you believe in history, you notice the A's are in better shape than they were in 1999, and essentially the same position that they've been in at this point of their whole playoff run. If you believe in luck and omens, you notice that a Texas team out-performing its Pythagorean projection won the division in 1999 (Pythagorean record: 88-74), and a Texas team out-performing its Pythagorean projection is leading the division this year. To be fair, the Rangers are only a game and a half ahead of their Pythagenport projection. That's the more accurate measure, though. Using the 1.83 exponent that's used in the calculation of the 1999 Pythagorean projection, though, we see that the Rangers are a little more than two games ahead of their expected record.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 21:29 | |

This is the second post.

It appears on blog A only but in multiple categories.

Posted by jason in News at 13:55 | |

I was waiting for something good to happen before I wrote about this series. So much for that. I think in the course of this ugly three-game sweep at the hands of the Red Sox, the A's displayed every weakness they have that they're, frankly, not supposed to have: incredibly weak offense (they're supposed to be decent), terrible bullpen (pitching is the strength, remember?), and remarkably little rotation depth (outside of Hudson [injured] and Mulder, who would you want on the mound in an important game?). That last item is the most troubling of all, and while it's not fair to judge solely on the basis of a series against the Red Sox, purveyors of one of the top offenses in the league, now and in perpetuity, I'm sure, Zito's seven runs in four innings, Redman's seven in just two and two thirds, and Harden's seven in five innings (the best start of the bunch!) are surely signs of trouble. Even supposing the A's make the playoffs, as is their wont these days, at least one of these guys has to start a playoff game. Unless we want to call Octavio Dotel in to reprise his prospect days, that is. It's certainly possible that Zito will have straightened out by that point, or that Harden or Redman will go on a Lilly-like tear in the second half, making all of this handwringing look foolish and shortsighted. It's also possible that these three will continue to be the "just ok" starters they've been for the entire first half, and that Oakland will be in a position of essentially throwing away one game of a five-game series. Given the likelihood that the team they'd face in the first round is Boston again (Boston's shot is the wild card, while the A's hope to get in through the division; the wild card would play the top team in the first round, except that the top team [Yankees] will likely be in their division, so they bump down a notch), throwing away one game, especially if that one game happened to be at home, is not a sharpest-knife idea. What's to be done? None of these guys can be realistically bumped for a new starter, though Redman has the weakest case: lots of money being paid to be a starter. You'd have to hope that, if the A's had a shot to acquire a Randy Johnson or something (not saying it will, or even should, happen) on the cheap, that they could pull the trigger, bump Redman to the bullpen, probably squeezing Justin Lehr back to Sacramento until September. Let's be real, though. Zito needs to get straightened out. That's all. He's a good pitcher, though perhaps not at the levels people thought he was (a Hudson, or even a Mulder), and he's not as bad as he's been this year. Redman might be showing the effects of being run into the ground last year. If that's true, there's probably no hope for him, and the contract he signed looks terrible. If it's not, then he also needs to get straightened out. He's not a Zito, but he's also better than he's shown. I don't have a lot of hope for either of those scenarios. What I do have hope for is that Rich Harden takes the second half to really break out. He puts his control problems behind him (five unintentional walks in five innings last night, more than a walk every other inning for the year) and really harnesses that Roy Oswalt-type stuff. Either that or he turns into Victor Zambrano. That's a whole lot of griping. Can we find any positives from the series?

• Justin Duchscherer's still pretty awesome, only running into trouble in the sixth on Wednesday, after throwing four and a third good innings over two games. Duchscherer is the only guy on the team with a positive ARP. Chad Harville also did mildly positive work while he was here, but he's not on the team anymore. The A's bullpen has allowed eight more runs than expected to score. Duchscherer by himself has prevented eight. The A's, already a bottom-ten bullpen team with him, are a bottom-five team without him, and that's without counting the effect that his innings go to bad pitchers if he doesn't pitch them.
• Ricardon Rincon threw 2.3 scoreless innings, the last 1.3 of them coming while the A's were mounting a comeback last night.
• Jim Mecir threw 1.7 scoreless innings, the 0.7 coming in relief of Rincon last night (i.e. it mattered).
• Oakland's offense finally came alive a little last night, getting eleven hits off of Curt Schilling in 5.3 innings, and making him throw 119 pitches. Four of those hits even went for extra bases.

The A's actually had a chance to win last night, and they have to be happy that they got to Keith Foulke: that doesn't happen all that often. That said, they still lost in extras, the Red Sox made up the three game lead Oakland had on them, the A's fell two behind Texas, and Kirk Saarloos is pitching tonight. Cleveland isn't that good, but purely by runs scored terms, their offense matches up with Boston's. Luckily for the A's hitters, they leave Boston feeling ok about themselves and go in to face a staff that's given up the most runs in the league, all while Texas has to run the Fenway gauntlet. It should also be noted that the A's got supremely unlucky in scheduling: they faced the Red Sox three best starters, in Wakefield, Martinez, and Schilling. Texas, coming in immediately after them, obviously will only face the first of those three, with Martinez and Schilling's spots in the series being taken by Bronson Arroyo (who's pretty good, but obviously no Pedro) and Derek Lowe (who's been downright awful, and whom Texas will probably destroy). For a team that was on top of the division only a short time ago, the A's could have themselves a tidy little deficit going into the all-star break.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 12:05 | |

In the spirit of Athletics Nation's mid-year review, I've decided to create one of my own. Rather than use my own set of arbitrary "expectations" and analysis of OPS, I'm going to use PECOTA, MLVr for hitters, VORP (I'll just double current VORP and compare) for pitchers, and playing time acrued as the basis for my grades. The rules:

• 90th percentile and above performance: A
• 75-89th percentile: B
• 40-74th percentile: C
• 10-39th percentile: D
• below 10th percentile: F
• Playing time at the A or B level: +
• Playing time at the D or F level: -
• Arbitrary adjustments always allowed by the author

Off we go! Starting Pitchers:

• Tim Hudson has 34.6 VORP, so he's on a 69.2 VORP pace. That's just a little short of his 90th percentile projection, so he's got a B to start out with, but with his current injury giving time to replacement-level pitchers like Kirk Saarloos, he's got no chance to bump that a little bit, even though, subjectively, I might give him props for maintaining his steadily amazing pitching through hell (no offensive support) and high water (the rest of the pitching staff, outside of Mark Mulder, falling apart). Final grade, then: B
• Mark Mulder has been the best pitcher in baseball by VORP, as he's on pace for 83.6. Because of PECOTA's extreme reluctance to forecast A's pitchers to have a good year, this is about 10 runs above Mulder's 90th percentile projection, so he starts with an A. His 250 are about 30 more than the top projection for Mulder, and, even were that not true, I'd have to subjectively, for the same reasons mentioned in the Hudson paragraph, push Mulder up to: A+
• Barry Zito. Ahhhh, Barry Zito. Everyone's first instinct is to brand him a failure, to give him a D- or an F for basically forgetting how to pitch, but maybe betting on him wasn't smart money in the first place. Perhaps what we should have expected isn't so far above what we're actually getting. Or maybe not. Zito's performance so far rates below his 25th percentile PECOTA. D.
• Young Rich Harden has been pretty decent so far, putting himself on pace for 31 VORP, a very nice boost to be getting from a fifth (or fourth, depending on where you want to place him in relation to Mark Redman) starter. Harden is just 22, and as a young pitcher with pretty poor control markers at times, PECOTA was very down on him, giving him just a 33% improve rate, with a 35% collapse rate. Harden's actual performance, though, puts him solidly in B territory, and his ability to take the ball every fifth day, separated shoulder or not, pushes his playing time pretty well past the 90th percentile projection, so Harden rates a nice B+
• Mark Redman has quietly been just as bad as Barry Zito, while making about a million and a half more bucks than his more famous counterpart. Redman's on pace for just 15.6 VORP, which gives him a D, though his ability, like Harden's, to take the ball every day so far, gives him a playing-time pace that bumps him a little: D+

Starting pitcher GPA (using the scale: A=4, A-=3.7, B+=3.3, B=3, ...): 2.52. That C+ indicates that the A's are essentially doing what PECOTA figured they would as an overall staff. I'm almost afraid to look at the next section: relief pitching.

• We'll start with everyone's favorite Moneyballer, Chad Bradford. He's been up and down this year, having periods of harkening back to last season's dominance, and periods of harkening back to my high school pitching days. Overall, he's on pace for 4 VORP in 75.3 innings. Remarkably, the inning count is equal to his weighted-mean projection. Unfortunately, his VORP is below his 10th percentile. F
• I'll just go alphabetically, since I started with Bradford. That puts Octavio Dotel next. Dotel's been a lifesaver for the A's, despite giving up a few deep balls in his few outings. I'll count his performance with the Astros as part of his grade, since I'm essentially grading players as individuals, not necessarily for their impact to this team alone. With his 6.8 VORP in Houston and his 0.3 in Oakland, Dotel's on pace for 14.1 for the season, in 84.7 innings. That's a lot of innings, but it's not a lot of value for a guy whose last three years went 29.9, 37.5, 30.4 VORP. D+
• The real lifesaver of the bullpen has been unheralded minor-league callup Justin Duchscherer (feel free to add as many "ch"'s and "er"'s as you like). The man has exactly as many VORP as Zito and Redman combined, despite pitching half the innings of either of them. He's on pace for 30.4 in 102 innings (quite a load out of the 'pen). PECOTA surprised me here. Its high-side projection (which is pretty much what I think we're seeing out of Duchscherer right now) is pretty dead-on with what he's doing for the team: B+
• Wouldn't it suck if the A's were paying Chris Hammond's salary. 1.8 VORP in 54.7 innings is not what Billy Beane had in mind. Even PECOTA thought he'd be better: D
• Justin Lehr's trying to be that rare minor-league closer who actually makes it in the bigs. He's got -1.2 VORP in 8.3 innings, but it's not really fair to extrapolate that playing time, since he's only recently been called up, and it's hard to say whether he'll have any place in the bullpen when/if the injuries (Hammond, Rhodes) sort themselves out. There's no projection for Lehr, so combined with a probably lack of second-half impact, we give him: No grade
• Jim Mecir's had a similar year to Chad Bradford, combining stretches that made A's fans say, "He's back!" with long periods of "Not again!"-ery. His numbers indicate 4.2 VORP in 55.3 innings, which, with the exception of playing time, is remarkably close to PECOTA's weighted-mean projection. Mecir, then, earns a C+, but costs Billy Beane a grade for having a guy with this little potential to help the team on the roster.
• Everyone's favorite closer, Arthur Rhodes, is next. He killed my fantasy team in the early going. I thought he'd be the undervalued guy who would just rack up the saves in an easy role on a good team. Did I ever turn out to be wrong. Thank goodness Danny Graves was still available. Rhodes has actually been above replacement level, a big surprise, though his 6 VORP in 58 innings at the end of the year won't be worth the pretty penny Oakland's shelling out (three cool ones). Weirdly, Rhodes's PECOTA card doesn't appear to be online, so, based on his weighted-mean projection in the book, I'm going to give him a D-
• Ricardo Rincon has been infuriating A's fans practically since Oakland traded for him. He's doing that same old act again this year, but the A's don't seem to want to try to get anything better than the 3.6 VORP over 40 innings he's on pace for. This is D level performance, and D- level playing time, though the playing-time indicator bumps Ken Macha's grade up a notch. D-
• Kirk Saarloos gets no grade, because he'll probably get just one more start, then see Tim Hudson push him back to Sacramento after the all-star break. Saarloos has put up 3.6 VORP in just 6.7 innings (two games, one start), though, so it might be worthwhile to make Jim Mecir go somewhere else (the DL - a strained cardio-pulminary ulcer or something) to see if Saarloos can make a nice pair with Duchscherer out in the 'pen.

Overall grade for what's generally regarded as the cancer of the team: 1.33. That's about right, a D+, only rescued from true levels of atrociousness by Justin Duchscherer. The poor grade exonerates Billy Beane to a certain extent, since he put together a group that we can say should be performing above their current level. Whether they're failing due to Curt Young's instruction, Ken Macha's usage, or their own poor performance, we can't really say. The outfield comes next. This was supposedly an upgraded area, with the acquisition of the disappointing Bobby Kielty and the semi-disappointing Mark Kotsay.

• We'll go by the alphabet again, beginning with Eric Byrnes. Byrnes, by playing time and value, is outpacing his best PECOTA projection. His 0.132 MLVr is a hair above his 90th percentile projection and he's on pace to far outstrip the 450 at-bats that top projection has him earning. A+ as Byrnes keeps on surprising.
• Jermaine Dye's been exactly the durable (leads the team with 347 PA's), valuable (.180 MLVr) player the A's hoped they were getting back when they signed him to that hindsight-is-20-20 terrible three-year deal. PECOTA had no way of knowing the circumstances surrounding Dye's fall from grace, but it was surely comparing him to other players who were felled by injury as well, and based on that, came to the conclusion that Dye had only something like a 15% chance of being an above-average hitter for the year. Thus, A+
• Oh, Bobby Kielty, where hast though gone? He's hurt and played himself right out of the outfield rotation, and his performance falls only marginally above his 10th percentile projection. D
• Mark Kotsay was brought in for his Chris Singleton-glove combined with a Lenny Dykstra (his 9th best comparable) bat. I can't really speak to his glove at this point, but with the bat, he's been almost exactly what the A's expected, and it appears that his back trouble hasn't flared up at all, as he's on pace for over 600 PA's. The consistent playing time earns him a plus, so his final grade: C+
• Billy McMillon's back, on the other hand, apparently is causing him problems, as he's currently on the DL. He wasn't giving the A's that nice OBP source of the bench that they brought him in to be anyway. There's something weird about McMillon's PECOTA projections: he's the only player I've seen yet whose higher projections actually give him less playing time. 180 AB's is his 90th percentile, while his 10th percentile is 187. First, that's a very small range, so PECOTA had a lot of confidence that he'd get that many at-bats, but the range going the opposite way is odd. Anyway, D-.

Oakland's overall outfield grade, 2.4, says that, like the starting pitchers, we're getting pretty much exactly what we should have expected from them. To the infield!

• Eric Chavez was not playing all that well when he got hurt, but he wasn't playing enormously below expectation, either. He should provide a big boost when he comes back, especially if he picks up his performance. C-
• There's no PECOTA card for Bobby Crosby online. Based on the weighted-mean in the book, though (which has him down for a -.040 MLVr, compared to the .065 he's actually providing), I'll give him a B+
• Scott Hatteberg's got no business hitting as well as he has. He's far outstripping his 90th percentile projection, and he's played his way into more playing time as well. His .381 OBP with the more surprising (especially for a lefty in Oakland's park) .473 SLG has been a salve for the offense. A+
• Eric Karros was supposed to be bad, but he wasn't supposed to be this bad. He just beats PECOTA's 10th percentile projection, and the fact that his rancid stick has kept him on the bench doesn't help his grade any: D-
• Mark McLemore's surprising .374 OBP has driven his performance to the B range. I suppose I have to dock him for playing time, since his lack thereof is less due to opportunity (no Mark Ellis, no Eric Chavez means lots of time for other people) than to his own injuries. B-
• Marco Scutaro has been hoovering balls at second all year long. A's fans can't get enough of his defense. Unfortunately, the A's also picked him up because he had good plate discipline in the minors. His Isolated-OBP (OBP-AVG) of just .023, though, isn't really showing that discipline. This offensive drag means he's underperforming, though his consistency in taking the field earns him a plus: D+
• Erubiel Durazo's hitting like a whale should, and nearly as often. I think PECOTA put too much stock in last year's off-year, allowing Durazo to do what the fans expected of him while still earning an A
• Adam Melhuse has gotten a little more playing time than PECOTA thought he would, but his hitting has been just about what we should have expected: low average, semi-decent OBP, very nice power. C+
• Damian Miller's offensive explosion this year has been nothing short of astounding. He's clearly at A-level, and the fact that he's trotting out there every day to catch the A's pitchers surprises PECOTA as well. Miller has another oddness in his PECOTA projection, though: his 90th percentile projection gives him a -8 defensive rating, while his 10th percentile is +4. First, that's an enormous range for defensive projections, which PECOTA seems to be very cautious about generally. Second, that's pretty much an illustration of the Inverse Law of Catcher Defense or whatever it's called. Good hitting = poor fielding, bad hitting = good fielding. Of course, that's only supposed to apply as a notion of people's perceptions, but I guess a computer can have the same fallacies of vision as a human. Anyway (again), A+

For the infield, then, an overall grade of 2.7. This is the highest grade yet, and is pushing the "over-performing" barrier. I refuse to go back and calculate the overall grade for the team. It looks like it'd be in the mid-high 2's, though, which means that the A's are doing a little better than expected to this point. In fact, BP has projections for runs scored and allowed for each team, using their Depth Chart feature. The A's were projected for 794 runs. They're on pace for 802. Oakland was projected to allow 684, but, due almost entirely to their bullpen, I'd guess, are on pace to allow 728. Using a Pythagorean exponent of 1.83, this projects the A's for 87, wins, five less than the 92 they were projected for at the beginning of the season. This would be a little worrisome, except that the A's actually have 46 wins right now, so they're close to that 92-win pace, and after the further adjustments Clay Davenport makes in his Adjusted Standings page to normalize for difficulty of opponent, etc., we see that the A's are only about a game ahead of where we might expect them to be. Putting all this together, let's just say that the A's are fine. It'd be nice if the Rangers weren't seemingly romping all over the league, but hey, what happens, happens. Seattle romped all over everyone in 2001, too, but that didn't stop the A's from getting to the playoffs.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 13:41 | |

David Pinto over at Baseball Musings has this little note about Barry Zito's struggles this year. I can only say that I wish I knew what was wrong with him. Perhaps, as Pinto suggests, he really is tipping his pitches. Maybe it's something more nefarious, like an injury. Maybe his world-renowned mental balance is off. Whatever it is, he's getting rocked repeatedly. This isn't something the A's need when they're already missing their best starter (I'm not talking about Mark Mulder) and their now-third-best pitcher (Rich Harden) is dealing with some shoulder issues (albeit not in his throwing shoulder; still, I imagine it's painful, and he's probably got to be extra careful that he doesn't let the pain throw his mechanics, and his already fragile control, out of wack). Those Zito trade rumors don't sound so bad now, though there's, again, no way the A's get fair value for him today. Zito's got nowhere to go but up, so we'll just have to hope that he, Curt Young, and maybe his dad can get together and straighten things out. There's also the thought that nobody wants to say, though: maybe Zito's done. Baseball is littered with flameouts, especially among pitchers, and not all of them are due to injury. While Zito's top PECOTA comparable is Steve Carlton's 1971 season (right in his prime, at age 26), on the list are also:

• Wilson Alvarez, 1996: it was his second-to-last good year, though he's enjoyed something of a renaissance recently;
• Lou Brissie, 1950: Brissie was great in 1948-1950, putting up 189 pitching runs above replacement [comparable to Zito's 232 from 2001-2003] before apparently being traded midway through 1951, seeing his performance blow up, and disappearing after 1953, at age 29. Turns out, according to this website, that Brissie had his leg blown apart in World War II, so that he pitched as well as he did was something like a miracle in the first place. Anyway, Brissie walked away from the game young rather than pitch in the minors again, so we can't really say whether he could have made a comeback.
• Mickey McDermott, 1955: McDermott put up a nice run from 1949 to 1955, starting at the tender age of 20, of PRAR: 23, 23, 52, 43, 70, 46, 50. Unfortunately, he never broke 100 innings pitched again, nor 15 PRAR, and he was out of the majors after 1961, at the age of 32. An elbow injury apparently slowed him down, and there are notes of 16- and 17-inning games pitched by McDermott in the early fifties, so perhaps the modern attention to health can keep Zito from this kind of trouble.
• A very alarming 1999 version of Justin Thompson. Thompson, as we know, hasn't pitched in the majors since that year and has, I believe, officially retired, though I can't find record of it.
• Dean Stone, 1956. Stone had put up 54 and 42 PRAR as a 23- and 24-year-old in '54 and '55, but managed just 3 in 51 innings the next year. He managed to stick around until 1963, though he didn't pitch in the bigs in '60 and '61. From '56 to '63, however, he managed just 24 PRAR in about 190 innings.

In other words, there's some alarming stuff there in terms of Zito's potential longevity. On the other hand, there are a number of guys who had four to six more productive years in the majors on the list as well, so perhaps the data's only alarming if you're by nature an alarmist (I am). The most interesting comparison, though, was to Kevin Millwood's 2001. Millwood's been an overrated pitcher, certainly, as 1999 was his only truly excellent year, but he's generally been a nice solid pitcher, chugging along with 45, 90, 53, 25, 69, and 61 PRAR. You'll notice the two outliers there. The first is the aforementioned 1999. I'll give you one guess in which year the 25 PRAR came. I'm not being entirely fair, though, because Millwood pitched just 118 innings that year, a number that, unless Zito comes down with some health issue, Zito's very likely to pass. Anyway, Zito's last three years has established a baseline performance much higher than Millwood's, but perhaps we can take some solace in his being compared to a guy who had one pretty bad year but bounced back quickly to his earlier levels of achievement.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 03:07 | |

I guess I spoke too soon. The A's finished off a sweep of the Angels last night, despite my comment that things looked grim, as the players I worried about, Barry Zito and Kirk Saarloos, both came through. I talked about Zito yesterday, but Saarloos did a fine job through five innings last night, giving up five hits (one double), one walk, and hitting Jose Guillen, but not allowing a run. Saarloos had been up and down in AAA this year, pitching atrociously in the early-going in New Orleans (Houston's system), before pitching pretty decently for Sacramento. He only threw 75 pitches, so Ken Macha probably wanted to get him out of there while the going was still good. The plan worked for an inning, as Justin Lehr threw a scoreless sixth (a minor league closer pitching well? Who'd-a thunk?) before getting popped around a little in the seventh (spoke too soon) giving up a homer (to Jose Molina!), single, single, walk, RBI fielder's choice, before being relieved by Ricardo Rincon. At this point, the score was 6-2, since the A's had put up a four-spot in the previous half-inning. Rincon was only in to pitch to one batter, Garrett Anderson, but Anderson came through with a single, scoring David Eckstein and closing the lead to three. Chad Bradford came on, though, and with runners on the corners and one out, struck out Guillen and Robb Quinlan (sandwiched around a walk to Jeff DaVanon, loading the bases) to end the threat. Anaheim went relatively quietly from there, with Octavio Dotel relieving Bradford to pitch the ninth (again), while the A's added an insurance run in the bottom of the eighth, a Damian Miller homer (his second of the game) off of Troy Percival. All in all, A's fans have to be pretty happy about this game. The decent pitching was there, 14 out of 36 batters reached base, and this time, seven of them scored, since the power I've been complaining about finally came through: aside from Miller's two homers, Jermaine Dye and Bobbys Kielty and Crosby each added one. Crosby's homer continues adding to his Rookie of the Year case, and Dye's put him in ninth place in the AL home run rankings, solidfying his case for a mythical Comeback Player of the Year award. The returns to expected production levels by Dye and Durazo, as well as the Renaissance of Scott Hatteberg (a new movie by Ron Howard, due in November) and the emergence of Bobby Crosby, are driving this team to offensive respectability, a position the A's seemed to have forgotten it was possible to strive for. The win combined with a Texas loss put the A's a half game back of first place. Since Boston lost that crazy game to the Yankees last night, Oakland's also two games up in wild card terms. Texas has to deal with Houston tonight, while the A's face the Giants: San Francisco is tied with Oakland in wins, but has two more losses, while Houston is 40-38, and second from the bottom in their division. That said, especially after the Carlos Beltran trade, I'd rather take on a team with an 11-run differential and Michael Tucker and Marquis Grissom in the outfield (Giants) than one with a 36-run differential and a Beltran/Lance Berkman outfield (Astros). On the other hand, the A's didn't look good against San Francisco last time around, and Texas hasn't really showed any signs of coming to earth, so I shouldn't get overly optimistic.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 14:08 | |

I called Barry Zito out yesterday, and he responded, throwing seven solid innings against the Angels, allowing just two runs (on a fifth inning homer by Adam Kennedy), leading the A's to victory, though he didn't get the "win" because Oakland didn't score the go-ahead runs until the eighth, after Ricky Rincon and Chad Bradford had combined to throw a scoreless inning. Octavio Dotel finished things off with a three strikeout inning to earn his second A's save. He did allow a hit and throw a wild pitch, but all's well that ends well. I'll get my quibble out of the way early here: the offense put fourteen men on base and only managed to score four runs. They didn't hit into any double plays and they only lost one man on the bases (Vlad threw out Mark Kotsay at third in the third inning on a Mark McLemore single that scored Marco Scutaro from second), but the complete lack of power (two doubles, one by Kotsay, one by Eric Byrnes, was the grand total) resulted in guys not really being able to get past third base. As long as the A's are winning, this is going to be a minor issue, and the game was in Oakland, so the lack of power can be explained away a little bit by the home ballpark. Also mitigating my recent complaints a little is the fact that the A's actually have the tenth best slugging percentage in baseball, though you could argue that it's batting average-driven, since they also rank tenth in that statistic. Believe it or not, they're actually tenth in on-base percentage as well. Unfortunately, all that hitting only results in a 13th-place showing in actual runs scored, so maybe there's some underperformance with men in scoring position here. There's some weirdness on this list, I must say: Montreal, the BP offensive darlings at the beginning of the year, are dead last in runs scored, and they're not close, trailing Seattle by a whopping 47 runs. I'm sure someone at BP has addressed this at least once so far, but I'm still catching up on all the articles I missed. I'm up to April as of today. The other notable offense is Colorado, who place 10th, just twelve runs ahead of Oakland. And that's really inexcusable for the Rockies. With that environment, they've really got to have awful players to score runs at that low a rate. With all that quibbling aside, it's nice to see everyone in the starting lineup get on base at least once, lead by the Mark Kotsay Revival Machine (single, double), who's got his OBP up to .361, and Erubiel Durazo (two singles, walk), who's putting up the kind of season this year that A's fans wanted him to have last year: .320/.395/.509, good for a team-leading 0.274 MLVr (for comparison's sake, that's David Ortiz-Hank Blalock territory), leading to 25.4 VORP, just trailing Scott Hatteberg for the lead. Kirk Saarloos has been announced as the starter for tonight's game, which, thanks to these first two wins, can't affect the A's second-place standing in the AL West. Oakland's ahead of Anaheim by 2.5 games and trail Texas by 1.5. And for all those who thought that the team that lost the AL East would run away with the wild card, Oakland leads Boston by a game in those standings, with Minnesota two games back, and Anaheim a half game behind the Twins.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 10:30 | |